Bill Clinton Is Sabotaging Obama

Bill Clinton has to be the smartest guy in the room even when heâs not in the room.

Clinton is not on Barack Obamaâs campaign staff, is not a trusted adviser, does not set Obamaâs strategy.

But Bill Clinton is pretty good at sabotaging Obamaâs strategy.

He did so last week when he went on television and said Mitt Romney had a âsterlingâ record while running Bain Capital.

The Obama message is exactly the opposite. The Obama campaign had just run a TV ad claiming that working Americans had been harmed by Bain Capital and included one man saying Bain had been a âvampireâ that âsucked the blood out of us.â

Whether you liked or hated the ad (I liked it), it attacked Romney on his strongest point: He is a good businessman who knows how to create jobs and, therefore, will be a good president.

But Bill Clinton did not like that ad.

âI think he had a good business career,â Clinton said of Romney and added that âa man who has been governor and had a sterling business career crosses the qualification threshold.â

Obama does not need Clinton undercutting him. The two are not close, but they are not supposed to be enemies. They have golfed together, they attend fundraisers together, their staffs talk and, oh, yeah, Clintonâs wife is Obamaâs secretary of state.

There are two things going on here. First, Clinton has always been cozier with Wall Street than Obama. In January 1999, I was at a very odd event for then-President Clinton on the 106th floor of the World Trade Center.